8.12 Global Score Files

Sure, other newsreaders have “global kill files”. These are usually nothing more than a single kill file that applies to all groups, stored in the user’s home directory. Bah! Puny, weak newsreaders!

What I’m talking about here are Global Score Files. Score files from all over the world, from users everywhere, uniting all nations in one big, happy score file union! Ange-score! New and untested!

All you have to do to use other people’s score files is to set the gnus-global-score-files variable. One entry for each score file, or each score file directory. Gnus will decide by itself what score files are applicable to which group.

To use the score file /ftp@ftp.gnus.org:/pub/larsi/ding/score/soc.motss.SCORE and all score files in the /ftp@ftp.some-where:/pub/score directory, say this:

(setq gnus-global-score-files
      '("/ftp@ftp.gnus.org:/pub/larsi/ding/score/soc.motss.SCORE"
        "/ftp@ftp.some-where:/pub/score/"))

Simple, eh? Directory names must end with a ‘/’. These directories are typically scanned only once during each Gnus session. If you feel the need to manually re-scan the remote directories, you can use the gnus-score-search-global-directories command.

Note that, at present, using this option will slow down group entry somewhat. (That is—a lot.)

If you want to start maintaining score files for other people to use, just put your score file up for anonymous ftp and announce it to the world. Become a retro-moderator! Participate in the retro-moderator wars sure to ensue, where retro-moderators battle it out for the sympathy of the people, luring them to use their score files on false premises! Yay! The net is saved!

Here are some tips for the would-be retro-moderator, off the top of my head:

• Articles heavily crossposted are probably junk.
• To lower a single inappropriate article, lower by Message-ID.
• Particularly brilliant authors can be raised on a permanent basis.
• Authors that repeatedly post off-charter for the group can safely be lowered out of existence.
• Set the mark and expunge atoms to obliterate the nastiest articles completely.
• Use expiring score entries to keep the size of the file down. You should probably have a long expiry period, though, as some sites keep old articles for a long time.

… I wonder whether other newsreaders will support global score files in the future. Snicker. Yup, any day now, newsreaders like Blue Wave, xrn and 1stReader are bound to implement scoring. Should we start holding our breath yet?